Labor Day week sees massive wave of releases, including Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Otomedius Excellent, and the latest Dragon Age: Origins expansion.
Next Monday is Labor Day, a national holiday in the US and the traditional end of summer. And once the barbecues have cooled and the last cold beverage has been plucked from the cooler, the week will see the start of the end-of-the-year game flood.
Superhero fans will get a double-dose of games on Tuesday, when Warner Bros. releases Batman: The Brave and the Bold (DS, Wii) and Activision ships Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (Xbox 360, DS, PlayStation 3, Wii). Unlike the dark and violent Arkham Asylum, the former title is geared to a younger audience, with a cel-shaded look and co-starring the caped crusader's longtime companion Robin. Meanwhile, the T for Teen-rated Shattered Dimensions will see four different versions of the famous webslinger trade blows and quip webslinger trade blows and quips with villains as he tries to reassemble a broken artifact.
Ubisoft is releasing two titles this week in two different genres. After a slight delay, the feint-focused World War II strategy title R.U.S.E. will arrive on the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. Those same platforms and the Wii will also receive HAWX 2, the sequel to the decently reviewed, Tom Clancy-branded air combat simulator.
Hockey fans will fans will also have a pair of games to choose from this week, both from Electronic Arts. NHL 11, the latest annual iteration of EA Sports' rink-and-puck franchise, will ship for the PS3 and X360 on Tuesday. The company is also releasing NHL Slapshot, a more arcade-style hockey game for the Wii.
The PSP will see a major release in the form of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, the newest installmentin the Square Enix'-Disney crossover franchise. The role-playing game lit up Japan's game software sales charts upon its debut in January, selling some 445,000 units within its first week on the market.
Fans of more bizarre Japanese games can sample the Xbox 360-exclusive Otomedius Excellent. Konami's hybrid game combines Gradius-style side-scrolling space warfare and combines it with visuals of exaggeratedly proportioned, attractive anime girls.
For further details on the week's games, visit GameSpot's
New Releases page. The full list of downloadable games on the PlayStation Store, Xbox Live Marketplace, and Wii Shop Channel will be revealed later this week. Release dates are based on retailer listings and are subject to change.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 (LABOR DAY) Photo World DSi--DS--Puzzle--Interworks Unlimited, Inc.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 101-in-1 Sports Megamix--DS--Puzzle--Atlus
Aion: Assault on Balaurea--PC--Role-Playing--NCsoft
Batman: The Brave and the Bold--DS, WII--Action--Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Brunswick Cosmic Bowling--WII--Sports--CokeM Interactive
Dawn of Heroes--DS--Role-Playing--Majesco Games
Dragon Age: Origins - Witch Hunt--PC, PS3, X360--Role-Playing--Electronic Arts
Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep--PSP--Role-Playing--Square Enix
Kung Fu Rider--PS3--Action--SCEA
Midnight Mysteries: The Edgar Allan Poe Conspiracy--DS--Adventure--MumboJumbo
NHL 11--PS3, X360--Sports--Electronic Arts
NHL Slapshot--WII--Sports--EA Sports
Otomedius Excellent--X360--Action--Konami
R.U.S.E.--PC, PS3, X360--Strategy--Ubisoft
Saints Row Diamond 2-Pack--X360--Puzzle--THQ
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions--X360, DS, PS3, WII--Action--Activision
The Sims 3: Fast Lane Stuff--MAC, PC--Puzzle--Electronic Arts
Tom Clancy's HAWX 2--PS3, X360--Action--Ubisoft
UFC 2010 Undisputed--PSP--Fighting--THQ
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 Amnesia: The Dark Descent--PC--Adventure--Frictional Games
Plants vs. Zombies--X360--Strategy--PopCap
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 No releases scheduled
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 Recettear--PC--Puzzle--Carpe Fulgur
Operation Barbarossa - The Struggle for Russia--PC--Strategy--Matrix Games
PAX 2010: Gearbox president Randy Pitchford confirms that his studio has taken over the long, long, long-awaited shooter, which will be playable on the PAX Prime floor.
Yesterday as part of his prolific Twitter stream, 3D Realms president
George Broussard posted a cryptic picture of pigs flying. Today, the reason became clear. At PAX Prime in Seattle,
Gearbox president Randy Pitchford took the stage to announce that his studio has taken over Duke Nukem Forever, which had been in development at the now-all-but-defunct 3D Realms since 1997.
Speaking to a shocked and enthusiastic crowd, Pitchford said, "We can't let the Duke die, right? The guys at 3D Realms who put their hearts and souls into this, so we wanted to make sure it hits all the platforms. It's coming to PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC in 2011."
Pitchford also told the
Wall Street Journal that Gearbox took over the game in late 2009, following the quasi-closure of 3D Realms and tit-for-tat lawsuits between 3D Realms and Duken Nukem Forever publisher Take-Two Interactive. (He also told the paper the game was coming out in 2010, but he said 2011 at PAX today.)
"Clearly the game hadn't been finished at 3D Realms but a lot of content had been created," Pitchford told the Journal. "The approach and investment and process at 3D Realms didn…t quite make it and it cracked at the end. With Gearbox Software we brought all those pieces together. It's the game it was meant to be."
Scott Miller, owner and CEO of 3D Realms, also reflected to the Journal why his studio failed to complete the game. "We were probably too much of a perfectionist about the game. When some other game had some great feature come out, we wanted to match it…We'd been distracted on other games like Prey. It was a combination of those things. We were trying to build a game that was too great."
The Duke Nukem-Gearbox connections don't stop there. Before forming Gearbox, Pitchford worked at 3D Realms on an expansion for Duke Nukem 3D for the PC. (The game was rereleased in 2008 as an Xbox Live Arcade title.) "People like George Broussard and the 3D Realms team are the reason I got into gaming," said Pitchford during today's speech.
Iconic characters from Team Fortress 2, Sam and Max, Strong Bad, Penny Arcade go all-in for publisher's latest PC card game.
In a recent interview, Valve Software's Gabe Newell promised three big surprises for gamers in the next 12 months. One such surprise could have been revealed today, as Telltale Games announced a company crossover poker game costarring the Heavy character from Valve's Team Fortress 2.
Set for release on the PC and Mac this fall, Poker Night at The Inventory brings The Heavy along with Max (Sam and Max), Tycho (Penny Arcade), and Strong Bad (Homestar Runner), for a card game that examines iconic gaming characters in a different context.
"We've had the idea for some time of exploring the idea of what video characters do when they're not 'on the clock' in the games we play," Telltale CEO Dan Connors said in announcing the game. "We pitched the idea to friends in the industry and it really resonated. We all had a great time imagining what these guys would banter about while slinging cards--from there, Poker Night at The Inventory was born."
Touting the project as "The Citizen Kane of poker games," Telltale said Poker Night at The Inventory will do more than just deal cards and take bets. The game will also include a dynamic dialogue system and fully voiced characters that taunt each other, have their own "tells," and adapt to each game situation as it plays out.
Although Telltale is best known for its episodic adventure games, Poker Night at The Inventory is not the first hand of cards it has dealt. The first title developed by the company was 2005's Telltale Texas Hold 'Em, a card game that sought to combine poker acumen with Telltale's distinctive sense of humor.
Publisher more than triples quarterly sales to $354.1 million; L.A. Noire officially delayed to first half of next year.
Take-Two is riding a little higher in the saddle thanks to the success of Red Dead Redemption. Today the publisher released "significantly better than expected" financial results for the quarter ended July 31, saying the critically acclaimed open-world Western had sold-in 6.9 million copies to retailers worldwide.
Company-wide, revenues for the quarter totaled $354.1 million, more than triple the $94.9 million in sales Take-Two posted for the same quarter the previous year. It also posted a net profit for the quarter of $5.9 million, a dramatic improvement from the $56.5 million loss it chalked up for the same period of 2009.
The numbers were so positive that Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick believes the current fiscal year will mark the first in almost a decade that Take-Two has posted a full fiscal year profit without the benefit of a major Grand Theft Auto release. To accomplish that goal, the company still has a ways to go before the October 31 end of its fiscal year. Through the first nine months of the fiscal year, Take-Two is still running a net loss of $11.2 million. Despite that, the company is at least heading in the right direction; at the same point of its last fiscal year, Take-Two was running a net loss of $116.9 million.
Beyond Red Dead Redemption, Take-Two said sales were led by Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, Grand Theft Auto IV, NBA 2K10, and Borderlands. Digital distribution is also a focal point for the company, as Feder said that the publisher has multiple new Borderlands and BioShock 2 add-ons in development, in addition to the already announced slate of Red Dead Redemption content.
The news of Red Dead Redemption's sales success wasn't surprising, but neither was the news of a delay for Rockstar's L.A. Noire. Originally announced in 2005, L.A. Noire is now expected to see release sometime in the first half of calendar 2011.
While the silence surrounding the Team Bondi-developed project caused some to assume it wouldn't be making its original October deadline, word of L.A. Noire's delay first emerged from analysts and retailers last week. Take-Two CEO Ben Feder said in a postearnings conference call with analysts that the company showed the game off to a great reception at a recent GameStop manager's convention and expressed confidence that the extra time will result in another critical and commercial hit for the company.
Ubisoft readying downloadable multiplayer shooter from developer of The Ship; game built on Valve's Source engine set for release this fall.
Upon its maiden voyage, Outerlight's 2007 debut The Ship received critical praise for its unique take on multiplayer shooters, where each person on a cruise ship has to hunt a specific passenger while avoiding his or her own stalker. The developer's long-awaited follow-up will soon see the light of day, as Ubisoft today announced that it will release Outerlight's Bloody Good Time for Xbox Live Arcade and Steam this fall.
Billed as a new intellectual property, Bloody Good Time takes place on a variety of movie sets, with environments like a beach house or a Las Vegas hotel. The game will see up to eight players slaughtering each other in those locales with traditional weapons (guns) and more unique fare (an exploding remote-controlled rodent). The players themselves will also stand out, with Ubisoft describing them as B-movie archetypes like "the bikini beach babe, the creepy clown, and the super jock."
Like The Ship, Bloody Good Time will run on Valve's Source engine. Source has powered a number of successful interpretations of the first-person shooter genre, including Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Counter-Strike: Source.
Managing director Keiji Inafune tells Spanish gaming site the publisher is working to get survival horror sequel to market "lo antes possible," will tailor next Devil May Cry for Western audiences.
For Resident Evil 5, Capcom upped the speed of the series' zombie-like hordes. For Resident Evil 6, the publisher might be upping its own pace to match that of the series' maddened adversaries.
Speaking with Spanish gaming site 3D Juegos, Capcom managing director Keiji Inafune addressed current plans for a number of its familiar franchises. According to a GameSpot translation, when asked about Resident Evil 6, Inafune said Capcom wants to release the game as soon as possible in light of Resident Evil 5's great success. Though the developer quickly moved on to other subjects, he did tease that news about the next installment in the survival horror series could arrive soon.
Inafune also talked about the possibility for a Devil May Cry 5. He said that when development on the game starts, it will probably be designed to appeal more to Western audiences. While the series has done well in Japan, Inafune said that Devil May Cry franchise sales in North America and Europe haven't been especially high.
As for a new Onimusha game, Inafune's response no doubt included more laughter than fans of the series would have liked. The developer said that nobody ever asks him about the series except the Spanish gaming press. He then jokingly suggested that if there is a next episode in the series, it would surely be set in Spain.
Star Wars studio said to have trimmed some 85 positions in advance of The Force Unleashed II's October 26 release.
In the past couple of months, Rockstar Games, Sony Online Entertainment, Firaxis, Realtime Worlds, and Ubisoft have all sent staff packing, for reasons ranging from studio bankruptcies to the ever-popular "realignment of resources." Now, it appears as if one more studio can be added to that list, as Kotaku reports today that approximately 60 developers and 25 external production and QA staff have been shown the door at Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II developer-publisher LucasArts.
The layoffs reportedly follow on from the completion of The Force Unleashed II, which is due to arrive for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PSP, Wii, and DS on October 26. In a statement provided to the news site, LucasArts confirmed the layoffs, saying that the reductions do not signal an end for the company's internal development efforts.
"LucasArts is reorganizing its teams to better address the needs of the internal studio. Unfortunately, this means adjusting staffing," LucasArts reportedly said in a statement. "LucasArts continues to be committed to creating a first-class internal studio--and to fostering relationships with trusted external partners--in order to deliver quality games that amaze and inspire fans."
LucasArts had not responded to GameSpot's request for comment as of press time. For more on The Force Unleashed II, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.
TopWare Interactive inserts life bars, combo systems into ancient strategy game for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC later this month.
Chess has existed for centuries unchanged, but that doesn't stop game designers from wanting to breathe new life into it. The next attempt to update the time-tested board game will arrive later this month, as SouthPeak Games today announced a September 28 release date for Battle vs. Chess on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.
Developed by Topware Interactive and Gaijin Entertainment, Battle vs. Chess includes traditional interpretations of the game, as well as dramatically overhauled takes featuring video game staples like life bars and combo attacks. Purists will be able to pit themselves against the Fritz 11 chess AI, get tips and move-by-move advice from the game's tutorial, and make their way up a ranking system.
Those who want an overhauled take on the game will be able to work through the game's Battle mode, in which the pieces come alive as fantasy archetypes and skirmishes are decided by a brief beat-'em-up fight sequence. The pieces in this mode will be competitively balanced similar to the real game (so a queen will have a significant advantage when facing pawns), but health bars that carry over from one fight to another will allow for players to work attrition into their strategies. Other variations include "madness placement," where the pieces are randomly strewn about the board to start, and a puzzle mode.
The console versions of Battle vs. Chess will sell for $40 at launch, while the PC edition will be available for $20. For more on the game, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.
Image of adventure game publisher's next project suggests Sam and Max, Penny Arcade, Strong Bad, and Team Fortress characters getting together for a card game; first Back to the Future game details revealed.
Portal 2 studio boss Gabe Newell says "people will be shocked again" by trio of announcements due over the coming year.
Valve dropped a sizable bombshell during the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo, when former PlayStation 3 critic Gabe Newell announced that Portal 2 would ship for Sony's console in addition to versions for the Xbox 360, PC, and Mac. What's more, Newell crowned the PS3 version of Portal 2 "the best console version of the game," due to its inclusion of Steamworks, which allows for auto-updates, downloadable content, and community support directly from Valve.
As it turns out, Portal 2's presence on the PS3 apparently won't be the only bit of shocking news from Valve in the near future. In an interview with PC Gamer magazine (and relayed by sister site CVG), Newell promised that his studio is planning to make three more surprising announcements over the coming year.
"We have three pretty big surprises in the next 12 months at least," Newell told the magazine. "I can guarantee you people are going to be surprised at stuff we do. That isn't going to stop anytime soon. I'm just laughing because…people will be shocked again."
One of those surprises may be Valve's involvement with Defense of the Ancients, a tower-defense-style game that began life as a map mod for Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft III. Last month, prominent voice actor John St. John posted to his Twitter feed that he had traveled to Valve's studio in Washington to record for DOTA. Shortly thereafter, Valve filed an application to trademark the phrase "DOTA" for use in games with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Another (arguably) surprising announcement would be that for Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Initially planned as a rapid-fire episodic series, Valve's Half-Life 2 expansions quickly took on a life of their own following the release of Episode 1 in June 2006. Episode 2 arrived more than a year after the first release in the series, coming bundled with Team Fortress 2 and Portal as part of The Orange Box in November 2007. Valve has not offered a time frame for the release of Episode 3.
Blizzard releases first-month sales total for Wings of Liberty; real-time strategy sequel on track to meet analyst expectations.
When Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty was released, analysts were bullish with their estimates, with projections of as many as 7 million copies this year. Blizzard is making headway towards these figures, as the publisher today announced one-month sales of 3 million copies.
Starcraft II sold 1 million copies on July 27 when it hit stores across the world and a further 500,000 copies on day two, making it the fastest-selling real-time strategy game of all time, according to Blizzard. While these numbers don't come close to matching those generated by World of Warcraft--Wrath of the Lich King sold 2.8 million copies in its first day--Blizzard's CEO Mike Morhaime today declared himself pleased by "how strongly the global community has already embraced [Starcraft II]."
Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets, who made the 7 million sales estimate, said today that the one-month figures show that "sales were not as front-loaded as some had expected" and that Starcraft II's numbers "are tracking slightly ahead of our 4 million estimate for [the July-September quarter]." These estimates include some monetization of sales in South Korea, one of the major markets for the game, which Sebastian said had not yet had an impact on sales figures because of an extended free trial period for gamers in the Asian nation.
After officially announcing the title in South Korea at the2007 Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, Blizzard confirmed in 2008 that the game would come in three parts. Wings of Liberty, the first in the trifecta, was initially due out in 2009 but was delayed just before the holiday season. While Wings of Liberty focussed on the Terran race, the other two parts--Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void--focus on the Zerg and Protoss, respectively. Neither of the other two parts--which are technically expansions--have a release date yet.
Electronic Arts readies online-exclusive add-on for popular life sim; vacation getaway lets players explore new island, discover exclusive in-game items.
With the game's one-year anniversary rapidly approaching, 2K Games and Gearbox announced today that they would be collecting all four add-ons into a single Game of the Year edition. Set for release on October 12, the Borderlands Game of the Year Edition includes all four aforementioned packs for $59.99 on the Xbox 360 and PS3 and $49.99 on the PC, in addition to the original campaign. A "comprehensive" Borderlands map will also be included with the package.
Notably, the expansion packs are not included on the game's disc. Instead, the add-on content can be redeemed by way of download tokens included with the package.
The Borderlands GOTY Edition will be preceded by the game's fourth add-on, Claptrap's New Robot Revolution. Due for release in September, the content thrusts players into a civil war between the Hyperion Corporation and the Claptraps, led by the elusive Ninja Assassin. The Robot Revolution downloadable content adds new missions and enemies--including Claptrap-ified monsters--to shoot and loot, as well as new boss battles.
As with Borderlands' other add-ons, Claptrap's New Robot Revolution can be purchased individually through each system's respective online service for $10 (800 Microsoft points).
Disney and Propaganda's vehicular action game cruising onto 360, PS3, PSP, Wii, DS, PC two weeks before film; $130 collector's edition includes light cycle model.
Tron: Legacy is expected to anchor Walt Disney Pictures' Christmas blockbuster offerings this year when it is released in theaters on December 17. Disney Interactive Studios' film tie-in will arrive nearly two weeks before, as the publisher announced today that Tron: Evolution has been given a December 7 release date for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PSP, Wii, DS, and PC.
Along with announcing a formal launch window for the Propaganda Games-developed action/vehicular combat game, Disney offered first word on the game's Collectors' Edition, which will be available only for the Xbox 360 and PS3. Following in the vein of Call of Duty: Black Ops, Halo: Reach, and Gran Turismo 5, Tron: Evolution's limited-edition package will carry a hefty premium over its standard-edition counterpart, costing $130.
Spiking the package's cost is an exclusive Tron light cycle collectible model (pictured), which is being manufactured by Sideshow Collectibles. The Collectors' Edition package also comes with a special casing to house the model, which in turn features a pullout drawer in its base for the game's box.
Detailing the events between the original Tron--released theatrically in 1982--and its imminent predecessor, Tron: Evolution features a story that further fleshes out the franchise's universe. Disney has positioned it as an integrated companion piece, where the film will reference events that occur in the game. However, the publisher also noted that both the film and the game operate just as well as stand-alone experiences.
Retail week highlighted by Nintendo's latest Samus adventure, tactical role-playing PSP game; other new releases include Sam & Max Episode 5, Dead Rising 2: Case Zero.
The fall's major release, Halo: Reach, is now just two weeks away, but gamers looking for something new this week have a number of options. New releases this week include Nintendo's deep-space bounty hunter game, a PSP tactical role-playing game, a zombie prequel adventure, and a four-player brawler for Sony fans.
Leading the pack this week is Team Ninja's Metroid: Other M. Coming exclusively to the Nintendo Wii, the game casts players as bounty hunter Samus Aran in a narrative set between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. First unveiled at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, the game is set on the hostile Bottle Ship, where players will face numerous formidable beasts.
Also coming to retail this week is Valkyria Chronicles II for the PSP. From developer Sega, the sequel is set two years after the original and thrusts players into a civil war in the game's homeland of Gallia. The portable tactical role-playing game casts players as a member of the Gallian Revolution Army, fighting a fierce battle against a tyrannical faction. Valkyria Chronicles II was released in Japan in January and will be available in North America on UMD and as a digital download through the PlayStation Store.
Switching to the downloadable game front, two years after The Behemoth released Castle Crashers onto Xbox Live, the developer is finally bringing it to the PlayStation Network this week. The title, a carbon copy of its competing console cousin, hits Tuesday priced at $15.
As for foaming-at-the-mouth zombies, Capcom releases Dead Rising 2: Case Zero exclusively on Xbox Live this week. Case Zero is a $5 downloadable prequel to the events of Dead Rising 2, which is due out at the end of September. Effectively a paid demo for Dead Rising 2, the game focuses on protagonist Chuck and daughter Katey and gives players a first look at and feel for the large-scale zombie battles that will come with the full game. Additionally, players can reach up to level 5 in Case Zero and are able to import experience and cash to the full game.
For the point-and-click adventurer, the fifth episode in the latest Sam & Max series hits this week. Telltale Games' Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse Episode 5: The City That Dares Not Sleep comes to the PC, Mac, and PS3 this Tuesday. The game continues the frenzied adventures of the unlikely dog and rabbit crime-solving duo.
For further details on the week's games, visit GameSpot's
New Releases page. The full list of downloadable games on the PlayStation Store, Xbox Live Marketplace, and Wii Shop Channel will be revealed later this week. Release dates are based on retailer listings and are subject to change.
MONDAY, AUGUST 30
Cosmos X2--DS--Saturnine Games
Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island--PC--Valusoft
TNT Racers--X360, PS3--DTP Entertainment
TUESDAY, AUGUST 31
Ace Combat: Joint Assault--PSP--Namco Bandai Games America
Camp Rock: The Final Jam--DS--Disney Interactive
Castle Crashers--PS3--The Behemoth
Cthulhu Saves The World--X360--Microsoft Games Studios
Dead Rising 2: Case Zero--X360--Capcom
Gunblade NY and LA Machineguns Arcade Hits Pack--Wii--Sega
Little Bears--DS--Zoo Interactive
Metroid: Other M--Wii--Nintendo
Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse Episode 5: The City That Dares Not Sleep--PC, PS3, Mac--Telltale Games
Valkyria Chronicles II--PSP--Sega
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1
Ferrari: The Race Experience--Wii, PS3--System 3
Mumbo Jumbo 6 Pack 2nd Edition--PC--Mumbo Jumbo
Prison Tycoon: Alcatraz--PC--Valusoft
Playdom pulls the plug on developer's entire catalog three months after acquiring the free-to-play online game specialist.
Acclaim is apparently dead again. Barely three months after the free-to-play online game publisher was acquired by Playdom, the social gaming company has pulled the plug on Acclaim's entire catalog.
On what used to be the official Acclaim Web site, visitors are given a short message saying that Acclaim games will no longer be in service, effective yesterday. The site also contains instructions on how customers can be reimbursed for unused Acclaim Coins (the in-game currency that drove the company's microtransactions) and plugs for Playdom's lineup of Facebook games. The site gives no indication that the Acclaim name will continue in any form. Playdom did not return GameSpot's request for comment as of press time.
Originally founded in 1987 as a publisher for consoles, PCs, and arcades, Acclaim enjoyed mixed success until it filed for bankruptcy in 2004. The company published critically lauded titles, such as Turok and Burnout 1 and 2, as well as less warmly received titles, such as BMX XXX, Batman Forever, and Space Jam.
Following the breakup of the company, Throwback Entertainment purchased many of Acclaim's key intellectual properties, while former Activision executive Howard Marks purchased the brand name. Marks went on to reboot Acclaim Games as a free-to-play games portal and had some success with titles like Bots, 9Dragons, and the rhythm action game RockFree, which at one point boasted 15 million registered players.
2K announces release date and price for upcoming content pack; $10 ware due out on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network at the end of the month, "later date" for Games for Windows Live.
We try out the final DLC chapter of Dragon Age: Origins. Warning: this story includes spoilers.
Dragon Age: Origins swept thousands of would-be adventurers away with an epic storyline that told the tale of a land torn apart by war, and the role of your character, a member of the powerful Grey Wardens legion, to bring peace. Over the course of that adventure, your character met the likes of knights, thieves, traitors, and faithful hounds. Your character also met Morrigan, a mysterious witch whose powerful sorcery made her a valuable ally but whose actions…well, let's just say she didn't always share your goals throughout your journey. Over the course of the original game and its ensuing downloadable content updates, Morrigan vanished from the world on her own uknown quest, and in Witch Hunt, the final DLC update for Dragon Age, you'll eventually track her down and be able to get some answers out of her. Please note that this story contains spoilers, both about the original game, and about the DLC itself.
Witch Hunt is described as being somewhere between 90 minutes to two hours long, and once again lets you either create a new Grey Warden character, or to import your existing character to play as. Since the DLC focuses on Morrigan, if you chose to involve your character in a romantic relationship with her, your dialogue options when you finally track her down will change, and if you decided to have a child with her, your speech choices will also be different.
In any case, Witch Hunt will let you revisit several locales from the original game, such as Flemeth's old home in the swamp and the Circle of Mages (from the original game's mage origin story), while meeting up to three new companions who can join your party. We began the adventure outside of Flemeth's home, searching for clues as to Morrigan's whereabouts and were greeted by the first companion, a Mabari hound (who, if you've imported a character who played through the original game, will be your original dog character, or will be an all-new companion if you're using a new character to play the DLC). After being joined by the faithful hound, we entered the hovel to find the female elf warrior Ariane who also hunted Morrigan, since the sorceress had apparently stolen away an ancient elven tome from her tribe. After striking a quick truce with the elf (who became our second companion), we then made our way to the mage's circle--both to research "eluvian," the topic of the mysterious elven book and also to meet the DLC's third companion, the mageling Finn.
Since our time with the DLC was limited, we skipped ahead to a few key points in the game, including a new boss battle with a new monster, the "varterral" (otherwise known as "the strider")--a powerful critter that will appear in Dragon Age 2 (just like how the previous DLC update, Golems of Amgarrak, also contained a monster that will appear in the sequel). The strider is an enormous, creepy-crawly critter that resembles a giant, spindly-legged spider made of driftwood. This giant creature has numerous abilities that can incapacitate your party members and also has a challenging habit of leaping into the air if it's getting too beaten up to escape your frontline fighters. Thankfully, we were playing a pre-loaded save game with characters that BioWare helpfully advanced to extremely high levels, so while the battle was a close one, it wasn't impossible.
We then skipped ahead to our final saved games--saved games for characters, some of whom had romanced Morrigan, others of whom hadn't. These last saved games were set just before the DLC's conclusion--at the moment where the party catches up with Morrigan and the main character can interrogate her. It seems that Morrigan has discovered a fully-functional eluvian--the magic mirrors from the original game that can potentially act as portals to another world, though to the enchantress's touch, the surface of the mirror rippled like water.
Despite the fact that we're basically spoiling the ending of the DLC in this story (and with it, the saga of the original Dragon Age), you can take comfort in the fact that Morrigan was her usual cryptic self, and generally avoided giving a straight answer to nearly all of our questions. When asked about her intentions, she simply replied that she had much to do that required her to acquire power over time, and that her adopted mother Flemeth was the real threat (and depending on whether you elected to kill Flemeth, you can take a slightly different dialogue choice here). When asked about the child, Morrigan says only that the child is somewhere safe, and being prepared for "what is to come." After barely giving you any kind of answers to your questions, you must then bid the witch farewell, though how you choose to end your meeting with her is up to you.
Witch Hunt will be released this Tuesday, September 7.
You read that right. The video game equivalent of the walking dead is playable here at PAX 2010.
We'll spare you any history lessons on Duke Nukem Forever. If you follow video games at all, you likely know the long, rocky, infamous--and did we say long?--history behind this first-person shooter. All you need to know is that it's actually playable here at PAX 2010. Granted, as you'd expect, there's quite a line to see it. But if there was ever a game where a lengthy queue was appropriate, it's this one. CEO of Gearbox Randy Pitchford certainly knows. "I heard the line outside was 13 years long," Pitchford joked while giving a presentation on how new developer Gearbox picked up the project after 3D Realms collapsed last year.
To give a quick summary, Pitchford described his personal attachment to the franchise (Duke Nukem 3D was the first game he worked on before forming his own studio) as well as the reason publisher 2K Games trusted Gearbox to salvage the project ("we brought them a megahit with Borderlands"). But it was a quick introduction, followed by a new trailer and the opportunity for everyone there to get some hands-on time with a couple of different levels.
The trailer was Duke at his ridiculous best, punching giant aliens below the belt, spouting one-liners, and taking more than a few self-referential jabs at himself. After that, it was time to play the game. The demo started off simply enough: You're standing in front of a urinal in a men's room with the screen politely directing you to pull the right trigger to begin urinating. This opening scene sets the table rather appropriately for a brief but utterly absurd demo. A few seconds later, you walk up to some EDF forces in a locker room drawing plans to deal with the current alien invasion on a whiteboard. One soldier--the only one left standing amid a number of mangled survivors--invites you to offer your advice, and after a little first-person whiteboard scribbling by the player, that soldier remarks something to the effect of, "That's a great plan! If we had done that, that guy over there would still have his arm!…"Pause. "And at least one of his balls."
Duke, being a man of action, quickly runs through the tunnels of this football stadium--it turns out that's where the demo starts--and out onto the field. Standing on the 50-yard line is a giant one-eyed alien monster called the Cycloid. Fortunately, Duke has just picked up a rocket launcher called the Devastator. Using this handy little weapon, you run all over the rain-soaked field dodging the boss's attacks while occasionally firing rockets at his single, solitary eye. After a couple of minutes, the beast is felled, and Duke celebrates by ripping out his eye and kicking a field goal with it.
After this, the game's first level, we were quickly transported to the 15th level. This one begins in some arid canyons with Duke cruising along in his signature monster truck. The controls are simple: just pull the right trigger to accelerate and hit the B button to handbrake around a corner. This sequence seemed like a bit of a palate cleanser, as there wasn't a whole lot of challenge--just cruise along, look cool, and splatter the occasional pig alien too stupid to get out of your way. But you run out of gas before arriving at a small canyon village and have to do on-foot battle against a bunch of ugly aliens.
To help even the odds, the game scatters a few useful guns around the little town. There's the railgun, which comes in handy for remote sniping; the shrink ray, which turns your enemies into tiny things that are almost too adorable to kill; and a turret gun for dealing with a landing enemy spaceship. Unfortunately, we weren't able to progress past said spaceship before the allotted demo time was over. But we'll go ahead and assume there were aliens, guns, and one-liners to be found after a successful completion. Call it a hunch.
If there's one thing that surprised us about the demo, it's this: Duke Nukem Forever is pretty darn fun for a game with such a tumultuous development. The comic timing was impressive, the guns felt satisfying, and the graphics were quite pleasing to look at. Of course, this is a Duke Nukem game through and through, so there are some inherent elements to it that will instantly turn some people off. But pick up a controller, spend a few minutes with it, and you'll be surprised at how well it has turned out. Whether the rest of the game can follow suit is something we're eager to see. Stay tuned for more.
A pair of cute robots star in Valve's team-focused twist on the Portal formula.
According to GLaDOS, Portal 2's dry-witted antagonist, scientific achievement is all about cooperation. That's why one of history's greatest scientific teams is the duo of "Albert Einstein and his cousin Terry." Of course, it's pretty obvious she's lying through her robot teeth on that one. But what would Portal be without a villain spouting out hilarious bits of grossly inaccurate misinformation at every turn? That's just Portal. But all this cooperation business? Well, that's certainly new.
Fortunately Valve is here at PAX 2010 to explain what co-op is all about, as this new feature was the focus of the developer's latest Portal 2 demo. To put it in context, this mode is one of the many new ways Portal 2 is expanding on its predecessor. In addition to a single-player story that Valve claims will last about twice as long as the first Portal, the co-op mode will clock in at roughly the same length--making for an overall package that's supposedly four times as large as the original Portal.
Co-op tells a parallel story to the single-player mode, with a pair of new robotic protagonists simply named Blue and Orange. They're an oddly cute pair, one squat and one oblong, looking almost like a robotic Bert and Ernie. The two players can interact with each other in a variety of ways that range from critical to solving puzzles all the way to almost entirely nonsensical. The latter includes the ability to wave at one another, or just simply start dancing in celebratory glee.
But as hard as it may be to hear, dancing alone won't solve puzzles. To solve puzzles, you'll need to master the new co-op mechanics. We were shown a few examples of ways the two players will have to interact with each other to progress through GLaDOS' increasingly devious death traps. One very basic option is a paint tool that lets one player tag a surface in order to indicate to his or her teammate that this is the place where you need to drop a portal. According to Valve, this is to alleviate the vague gesturing and eventual frustrated shouting that tends to creep up whenever two players are trying to tell each other where to go in an online game.
Beyond simply tagging walls and surfaces, you can now work together by combining your portals to send one player to areas he wouldn't normally be able to reach on his own. As one example, Valve showed us how infinite falling can work in a co-op scenario: Player B sets up two portals above each other and lets Player A fall infinitely between the two. Then, Player B carefully aims and shoots a portal onto a distant wall to launch Player A--with all that built-up momentum--across a pit of deadly goo and onto a safe ledge. There were times in the first game when you could do something like this, but infinite falling was almost always too disorienting to use strategically. But with a friend at your side, it's suddenly a mechanic that can be used quite a bit more often.
Adding more complexity are some of the new objects you can interact with in the world. One we were shown was a reflector cube designed to reflect the path of deadly lasers. These come in handy whenever the door leading to your goal is powered down, making it necessary to guide laser beams to laser receptacles to power the door back up. One player drops the cube in a certain location, while another drops portals around to carefully guide the laser beam along. The trick, of course, is making sure you don't accidentally zap your buddy with a deadly laser beam along the way.
Everything we were shown suggested a very promising follow-up to the original Portal. This new co-op mode is looking a bit more complex and heavy on mechanics, so it could very well provide a much steeper learning curve. But between GLaDOS' reliably laugh-worthy dialogue--and there was plenty of it--and the sense of accomplishment that goes along with solving those puzzles, we'll go ahead and assume that the steeper climb will be worth it. You can expect to see Portal 2 arrive on February 9.
We get our hands on this soon-to-be-released downloadable content for Mass Effect 2.
BioWare's space opera sequel Mass Effect 2 has already offered players hours of hybrid shooter and role-playing adventure, but the developer isn't done yet. The next downloadable content for the game, Lair of the Shadow Broker, is described by BioWare as the "most premium DLC" for the game yet and will be the "richest in scope," since it not only will include five new levels (of which one is open-ended), but will also introduce content that will actually start bridging the gap between Mass Effect 2 and the next game in the series. The DLC will be released next week and will let you reconnect with an old friend, Dr. Liara T'soni, the blue-skinned asari researcher from the first game with whom you, as Commander Shepard, could have a romantic relationship. This time around, the good doctor ends up in a whole heap of trouble with the crime lord known as the Shadow Broker--the mysterious figure who has been referenced in both Mass Effect games--and it's up to you to rescue her. Please be advised that this story may contain minor spoilers.
Lair of the Shadow Broker takes place during the main Mass Effect 2 game on the planet Illium and begins with Shepard receiving a note from Liara to meet her at her home. Obviously, if you decided to have that special relationship with Liara in the first game and have imported your saved character to Mass Effect 2 to play the DLC, your interactions with Liara will be different. In any case, after reading the message, you can transport yourself immediately to her lodgings, which have been ransacked and covered by far-flung-future police tape (digital light displays with a scrolling ticker that reads "Police Line: Do Not Cross"), with Liara herself nowhere in sight. The local authorities were already prowling through the wreckage and demanded we leave the area, though a high-ranking asari agent, a Spectre (the special operatives of the Citadel Council, like Shepard) named Tela Vasir, pulled rank and cleared us to enter the apartment.
In a brief conversation with Vasir, we learned that Liara had apparently fled the scene moments ago, but we deduced that she must have left a note, or at least some clues, behind. After briefly searching her apartment, we found a picture, keyed to Shepard's identity, which changed to a landscape of an alien planet whose relics were part of the doctor's collection. We then scanned each relic until we found a hidden data disc with a recorded transmission of Liara conversing with an underground contact about the Shadow Broker's next move at the Dracon Travel Center, a huge downtown high-rise. The transmission ended with both Liara and her contact spooked by the sound of a break-in and both characters fleeing downtown.
We immediately transitioned over to the building--by way of a loading screen--with our team, while Vasir hopped into her hovercar to cover the building from the roof down. Our party entered the building to find not only that it had been blown up by explosives, but also that dozens of its employees had been gunned down by professional mercenaries whom we eventually encountered in the bombed-out office space, ducking down beneath the partial-cover flaming desks and torn-up computer terminals.
We finally made our way to the top and were just too late to save the informant from being shot, though Vasir was on the scene, claiming that she, too, had been too late and that the Shadow Broker's henchmen had already fled. Because we hadn't seen the shot ourselves, we found the agent's story to be highly suspicious, and moments later, our suspicions were confirmed when Liara herself emerged from the shadows with a gun trained on the Spectre, accusing her of murdering the contact and raiding her apartment. At this point, Vasir attempted to make a dramatic escape, finally leaping into her hovercar to escape into the Illium night.
Our party leaped into the nearest vehicle, a hovering taxi, and gave chase as part of Mass Effect 2's new car chases, which act a bit like a futuristic arcade racer with a Z-axis. Vasir's vehicle appeared onscreen with a bright-red marker and left a bright-red contrail, so she was easy to track, although the underhanded agent also had explosive mines that she left floating behind her that threw our own vehicle off track. Since our own vehicle didn't have any weapons (it was a taxi, after all), we couldn't do much other than try to follow Vasir around every tight turn and not slam into oncoming traffic. Fortunately, the game autosaved several times over the course of the chase, so it wasn't frustrating. Finally, the chase ended when Vasir had a head-on collision and went spinning out of control. We pursued the agent and leaped out of our vehicle to pursue on foot, at which point our play session ended.
Lair of the Shadow Broker will be available this Tuesday, September 7.
We spend some more time in the troubled world of Albion in Lionhead's upcoming role-playing sequel.
While we just saw Fable III a few weeks ago, logging in a chunk of time from the start of the game, Microsoft offered us another opportunity to spend more time with the game at its Washington offices. As we've noted previously, the latest entry in the role-playing series leans into the theme of choices--great and small--and how they affect the world. Our time with the game let us cover some of the territory we just saw, albeit tightened up some, and also take a more exploratory route through the game.
The early stretch of our time with Fable III played out as before with players being given the choice to pick their gender and familiarize themselves with the current state of Albion, where things start to go poorly pretty quickly. Once the setup is complete, the game still keeps its training wheels on for a bit as you're guided to some set locations and directed through the start of some of the main story quests. However, once you've cleared those required to set up the story and introduce you to the concept of followers and the Road to Rule leveling system, you're free to move along at your own pace.
Your trusty canine buddy is back and always eager to direct you to loot--both obvious and hidden--so you can go exploring for a while if you like. If you're the more devoted sort, you can invest a good amount of time mingling with the various locals you'll meet in towns and other places to build relationships with them that yield guild seals. These are Fable III's nearest equivalent to experience points. Not only does this help with moving through the various gates along the Road to Rule that require a certain number of followers and seals, but it also makes new quests available to you that are specific to building your relationship with a particular character.
If you're feeling more entrepreneurial, you can take on various jobs and make some cash you can use to get a house, set up a shop, or get yourself some nice clothes. But, if you're a no-nonsense linear-gameplay-loving type, you can choose to bypass the side stuff and work your way through the story, which appears to give you just enough followers and guild seals to keep you moving along through the Road to Rule.
However, if you opt to stick to the central story religiously and don't let yourself get sidetracked, you may regret it. Your guild seal count will force you to make some choices about how to upgrade your character, as many upgrades will require more seals than you'll have if you try to tear through the game. We learned fairly quickly that it's probably in your best interest to pick up every upgrade you can on the Road to Rule to ensure you're buffed up enough to deal with the mobs of enemies you'll encounter.
Speaking of enemies, the revamped combat system works amazingly well, even in the work-in-progress version of the game we tried. Combos are key to battle and the three-button system keeps them attainable. Juggling straight melee combat with magic and firearms is a very satisfying experience, thanks to the charge moves you can work into the mix. As before, the tactics you favor will help your character evolve in a specific direction, which lets you buff up in the areas that are central to how you play.
The visuals in the work-in-progress version of the game we played were coming together well. Albion is a picturesque place teeming with variety. The different environments we've seen strike a nice balance between new and familiar. The world has a more …lived in… look to it this time out, which we expect is due to all the oppression going on, though we did come across some places that still had some natural beauty to them. The residents and your chosen character are an expressive bunch that come alive as you try out whatever interaction options you have on them. Animation on your character and the various non-player characters you'll come across tend to be where you'll find the game's broadest stabs at humor so far.
In terms of effects, there's quite a bit going on during combat, thanks to the different options open to you. Magic is obviously where you'll find the flashiest effects; the fire and shock spells we saw were impressive and tossed around a good amount of particles and lighting. Melee and gunplay, while not quite as showy as magic, featured more cinematic flourishes tied to camera angles and more subtle lighting to reflect your charged attacks. The unfinished version of the game ran fairly smoothly, although there were the occasional hitches that are to be expected when dealing with an unfinished game.
Based on these recent sessions with the game, we're anxious to spend more time with Fable III. The various refinements and overhauls Lionhead's done give the game a decidedly different feel from its predecessors. While this has changed the game's pacing and balance to a more action-oriented direction, it doesn't appear to have diminished the fun to be had in single-player. We're also very anxious to see how the experience we had is affected by the multiplayer elements. We'll be curious to see how the whole promising package fares when the game ships next month for the Xbox 360.
Gambling on matches and a suite of expanded customization options are some of the highlights from our time playing Black Ops online.
With Call of Duty: Black Ops, developer Treyarch is taking the venerable first-person shooter franchise into the secretive world of Cold War-era special operations. Thus far, we…ve seen single-player demos ranging from an intercontinental flight by SR-71 Blackbird aircraft to subterranean tunnel combat in the throes of a Vietnam war zone. Tonight, however, Treyarch and Activision gave the press its first look at the game…s online multiplayer side--that leveling-up system of persistent unlockables that…s long been a hallmark of the series. With additions ranging from training tools to ease in new players to a points gambling system for the hardcore bunch, it…s clear that Treyarch is casting a wide net with the new features it has conjured up for Black Ops multiplayer.
The most daring change to the leveling and experience points formula that Modern Warfare first introduced to the series is a new currency system. In addition to earning XP the good old-fashioned way, you…ll now be able to earn an in-game currency called CP, or CoD points. Depending on the game mode you…re playing, you…ll be rewarded in XP, CP, or both. On a basic level, CP lets you manually unlock new weapons, attachments, and perks a la carte, rather than follow the preset upgrade tree we…ve seen in previous Call of Duty titles. But in addition to paying CP for a new red dot sight five levels before you would normally unlock it, you can elect to gamble your CP in a new collection of game modes called Wager Matches.
These new modes--four in total--require players to risk some of their CP at the beginning of the match with the potential to win it all back and then some at the end of the match. The thing is that only the top three players in the match win money--the rest go away empty handed. In addition to this gambling mechanic, the four Wager Match modes offer an interesting twist on standard Call of Duty multiplayer modes. In One in the Chamber, each player starts the match with three lives and a handgun loaded with a single bullet. Killing players lets you pick up their guns, but if you waste your bullet, you…ll have to run around with only melee attacks. The action is very tense, and conserving ammo in such a way couldn…t feel like more of a departure from the usual run-and-gun style for which has the series has become known.
We also played a Wager Match mode called Gun Game. This one starts each player off with a single handgun as well, but the difference becomes apparent very quickly. With each kill in Gun Game, you suddenly pull out a new, more effective gun--essentially moving up a tier. There are 20 tiers in total, and the first to get a kill with each gun is the winner. However, when you get knifed, you…ll actually drop back a tier, so it…s possible to lose progress (especially if one of your enemies is hell-bent on griefing everyone). In our experience, the endgame strategy in a Gun Game match can differ wildly from its early moments, as the sniper rifles you get when you reach about tier 15 require a more patient shot than the shotguns and automatic weaponry you wield earlier. When you add this to the fact that you…ve got money on the line, it…s easy to see how some of these Wager Match modes could feel very intense.
If this new currency and gambling system is more suited for the hardcore Call of Duty player, the new Combat Training mode seems geared to lure in those who would normally be intimidated by such complex mechanics. For the first time ever in the series, players will be able to set up a match against AI-controlled opponents to learn the ropes of a competitive multiplayer match. These can be played either solo or with friends. Combat Training lets you learn the ins and outs of each map, as well as get a feel for the game…s various weaponry--all without the fear of being killed constantly by high-level human opponents.
Another new feature that offers similarly educational potential is the Theater. Like the Halo 3 mode of the same name, Theater automatically saves your replays and gives you the chance to go back and watch them from any perspective in the match. You can even record certain segments within the replay, customize the transitions, and turn them into a highlight reel of gleeful kills. All of these replays can be shared online, giving you the chance to either learn from the masters or simply boast your triumphs to friends.
Neutral to any …hardcore… or …casual… designations is the expanded suite of customization tools in Black Ops. It doesn…t matter how good you are or how well you know a map…s check points--all you need is an artistic streak to appreciate these additions. The big one is the emblem editor. Modern Warfare 2 introduced the idea of player emblems--those little graphics that players could choose to appear next to their names on the onscreen menus and …killed by… notifications. In Black Ops, you can design your own emblem from scratch with a system similar to Forza Motorsport…s multilayered vinyl editor. After you…ve made your own custom graphic--we elected to go with a bunny rabbit with an imposing skull for a face--you can then choose to slap that emblem onto your gun for all to see in battle. The same goes for your clan tag, as well. Other options include expanded camo patterns and even customizable reticles. If you…ve ever wanted to grief opponents by killing them and making sure the kill cam they see of your actions shows a smiley face aiming reticle taking their lives, well, now you can do that.
Of course, Call of Duty online multiplayer is still, at its heart, about visiting exotic locales and finding new and exciting ways to shoot people in the face. So naturally, we…d be remiss if we didn…t mention some of the gear and maps we experienced during our hands-on time. One of the fun new bits of weaponry is an honest-to-goodness flamethrower gun attachment, and we had a fun time roasting enemies with it. There…s also a Valkyrie missile that lets you fire your weapon and manually guide the ordinance directly to your target, whether that…s through windows or around corners. In terms of map offerings, we played in three different locations: a snowy Russian mountaintop called Summit, a Vietnamese urban war zone called Cracked, and a fairly standard warehouse map called Radiation.
There…s certainly a lot to the multiplayer in Black Ops. We could go on about various and sundry observations we spied, like the equipment you can drop to wreak havoc on your enemy's radar or the minature RC car rigged with explosives you can unlock as a kill streak, but we might be here all day. So suffice it to say, there…s quite a bit going on here--but fortunately, it's not all added complexity purely for the most diehard of players. Still, exactly how all these new features wind up coming together is something that only time will tell, but we…re optimistic about a lot of these features. When you throw in the training tools to help ease the transition, a lot of these things look even more appealing. You can expect to see more Black Ops coverage leading up to the game…s November 9 release date.
We try out 2K Marin's upcoming downloadable add-on for BioShock 2 that gives fans a final single-player adventure in Rapture.
2K Marin is putting the finishing touches on the last piece of downloadable content for BioShock 2--a single-player-focused piece set in Minerva's Den, an as-yet-unseen part of Rapture that takes place in parallel to the game's main story. We recently got some hands-on time with the early portion of the DLC, as well as a demo of some other aspects that showcased the mix of old and new packed into the studio's farewell to Rapture.
Minerva's Den is a technological wonderland that has been cut off from the rest of Rapture. Once upon a time, the den served as a house for Rapture's computers. You'll play as a Big Daddy named Subject Sigma, another Alpha-series behemoth that gets his free will back via circumstances that will be made clear over the course of the adventure. The story kicks off in familiar fashion, with Sigma gaining consciousness and being contacted by Charles Milton Porter, a computer savant who created the intricate systems that keep all of Rapture running. While fans of the series will be familiar with most of Porter's creations, one will be quite new: a supercomputer called the Thinker that serves as Rapture's brain.
Thanks to some ADAM-enhanced improvements, the machine processes data at the speed of thought. But, much like all the cool stuff within Rapture, things have gone a little askew. Details on just what had gone wrong weren't clear when we played, but like any good supercomputer, the Thinker has gone a little bonkers: new security bots roam the halls of Minerva…s Den, Big Daddies are lumbering around with new weapons, and Porter is asking for help. The specifics of what has happened and the trouble Porter needs a hand with are mysteries that you'll have to uncover.
The story of Minerva's Den will span three areas in the new district and introduce you to new characters, enemies, and a new aspect of Rapture…s history. From what we…ve seen, it appears that part of the mystery is tied to a disagreement Porter had with his business partner, Reed Wahl, over how the technology was being used. The narrative will play out via the now standard mix of cutscenes, radio messages, and voice recorders. It also appears that besides the new faces, you…ll be hearing and seeing some familiar ones as well. During our hands-on session with the game, we found a recorder that commemorated Porter being brought on by Andrew Ryan, and 2K Marin reps told us that Minerva…s Den will offer some insight into what Dr. Tenenbaum got up to after she took off near the start of BioShock 2's main narrative.
In terms of gameplay, Minerva's Den strays a little from what we…ve seen in BioShock 2 thanks to a new weapon and plasmid. The former is an ion laser--a good, old-fashioned death ray that rips into enemies and does a stream of damage as long as it connects. As with other weapons in the game, you'll find alternate ammo, including thermal firepower that sets your target on fire. The new gravity-well plasmid plays with physics via a vortex that pulls things toward its center while doling out high levels of damage. Collecting new plasmids, weapons, tools, and even ADAM are key parts of the journey. From what we played, it definitely looks like the DLC will be offering a condensed leveling experience that will have you powering up Subject Sigma, and you'll even get to save or harvest six Little Sisters.
You…ll need all the powering up you can get to deal with the new threats in Minerva's Den, which include a new Big Daddy known as a Lancer, new security robots, and splicers. In addition, although we didn't see anything blatantly menacing, we have to assume that if the Thinker turns out to be a threat, it's not going to be too warm and fuzzy either.
Based on what we played, Minerva's Den looks to be a meaty piece of DLC that will round out the last tour of Rapture nicely. The gameplay is solid, and the story is interesting. The additions to your plasmid and weapon arsenal are cool, the new enemies will keep you on your toes, and the new achievements are always good to see. Fans of BioShock 2 will want to keep an eye out for Minerva…s Den when it's released on August 31.
We take an exclusive flight deeper into HAWX 2's single-player campaign and try out UAV scouting and a little air-to-ground combat.
The high-flying sequel Tom Clancy's HAWX 2 will let you return to the skies as an ace fighter pilot, but the sequel will have plenty of new toys to play with, including a wide array of different aircraft to fly from modern American, British, and Russian forces. In addition, the game will have all-new military tech that won't necessarily involve flying, such as unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drones, and it will also have a larger variety in its missions, including some that will challenge you to switch from midair dogfighting to bombing runs in a matter of minutes. We've tried out some of this new stuff and have new details to report. Please be advised that this story contains minor plot spoilers.
The first new mission we played, "Thieves in the Night," took place about a third of the way through the game…and it didn't even involve getting into a cockpit. We'll explain: The game's story involves quelling an uprising by angry insurgents who are being supplied by a mysterious arms dealer, and part of your job as a member of the HAWX team is to use a UAV to tag key locations on a satellite-image map. In this mission, our Russian contact, "Wolfhound," was on the ground and had identified the mysterious arms dealer who is apparently supplying the insurgents with anything from heavy-duty bombardment missiles to crates of assault rifles with the help of a mysterious and highly placed source in the Russian military. The UAV view is a zoomed-out map colored completely in green. The view vaguely resembles HAWX 2's zoomed-in bombing view (which lets you switch the view from your bomber cockpit to a zoomed-in image of the ground below, from which you can acquire bombing targets). In the case of the UAV, your job isn't to drop any bombs, but rather it's to paint key targets with infrared (IR) markers so that they can later be bombed by your allies.
In this mission, you must first paint a few key bombing targets by putting them in your sights and pressing the fire button to mark them. However, the arms dealer himself suddenly makes an appearance, being driven in his own car to meet with his local customers. At this point, we were required to focus our sights on the dealer's moving car (which appeared as a tiny white blip on the radar) to maintain a surveillance audio link that let us eavesdrop on his conversations so long as we kept him in sight. (Fortunately, HAWX 2 frequently autosaves checkpoints after each individual task within missions, so while the few times we let our quarry slip away meant that the mission was over, we were able to restart more or less exactly where we had left off.)
The eavesdropping clued us in on more intel--namely, the site of other weapon drops in the city and on nearby docked freighters, which we also painted for airstrikes. Eventually, the arms dealer made a transaction with his local partners, after which the cars of all involved parties scattered in different directions while we carefully followed our original target. However, it was just then that our Russian contact was spotted by a few of the arms dealer's henchmen--then quickly dispatched both men and dragged their bodies into the shadows. Since our contact's cover was blown, our last order of business in this mission was to help him escape by using IR tagging on enemy roadblocks so that he could be clued in on which side streets not to take on his way out of town.
We then skipped ahead to a different mission later in the game--about halfway through--called "Behind Enemy Lines." The mission takes place just after the Russian army has recovered a pair of stolen nuclear warheads from the enemy and is flying each one back to Mother Russia in transport planes. Our job, as a Russian pilot, was to jump into a Su-27 Flanker and escort the carriers through enemy territory on their way home. Unfortunately, the enemy was already on the alert and had a substantial force already airborne and headed our way, which meant that we had to do double duty both defending the transports and defending ourselves from enemy fighter planes.
After beating back a few waves of enemies, we finally approached an area dug in by allied Russian forces that had antiair guns stationed on the ground. These areas were marked on the map by obvious glowing green outlines, and we did our best to lure enemy fighters into the kill zones to get them off our backs.
We'd finally gotten rid of most of our enemies and had nearly reached friendly space, so the transports set a course to take the long away around the last stretch of hostile territory, which was equipped with antiair guns of its own. However, our high-ranking commanding officer in the Russian military made the puzzling demand that we cut straight through, since the route through enemy lines was much faster. (Why he gave that order is anyone's guess.) Unfortunately, one of the transports, piloted by none other than Wolfhound, was hit by enemy fire and had to make a crash landing right into enemy territory--a small encampment on the lee side of a dam.
Though Wolfhound was able to expertly land the damaged craft safely (without any of that unsightly nuclear holocaust), the frustrated agent immediately demanded an evac, which our commanding officer assured us was inbound. While Wolfhound established a perimeter, enemy vehicles and emplaced cannons on the ground had begun to open fire, and we were tasked with using our Flanker, an excellent dogfighting ship, to go toe-to-toe with earthbound tanks and gun emplacements in a narrow mountain valley. This is a lot tougher than it sounds, since the Flanker is a heavy-duty fighter jet that, while equipped with powerful armament, doesn't exactly turn on a dime.
We did the best we could, carefully swooping down into the bowl of the valley and dumping as many missiles as possible onto our foes before pulling up like mad to avoid crashing right into the mountain. While we scored several kills, our grounded comrades were unable to hold out against the assault, and rather than risk having the nuke be recaptured, our high-ranking commanding officer ordered us to aim and fire at the dam, which would surely kill Wolfhound and the transport survivors but would also eliminate all opposition on the ground and at least let the Russian forces come back later to pick up the pieces. We had no choice but to blow the dam, dooming our comrades to a watery death while our high-ranking Russian commanding officer assured us of how shameful it was that such brave men should die for the cowardice of politicians.
HAWX 2's single-player campaign will offer plenty of variety and the ability to use some interesting new toys beyond just more fighter jets. The game will be released on September 7 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
We grab our gun and roam the corridors of this upcoming alien shooter sequel.
The rumour mill began to squeak in late May this year when North American rating body the ESRB classified Alien Breed 2: Assault and let the cat out of the bag early. At Gamescom 2010 we sat down for a look at this space sequel.
The game is split into two distinct parts: a single-player campaign mode, of which we saw a chunk of the prologue mission, and the new Survivor mode. If you missed out on playing the first Alien Breed game, it…s essentially a dual-stick isometric-perspective space shooter. Your job is to pick up a weapon and blast the goo right out of the hostile foreign forces aboard a ship. Nothing has changed with the premise, but this time around there will be a greater variety of weapons, a more advanced upgrade path, and more story set-piece moments.
The basic assault rifle will be your best friend as you shoot aliens in the face and avoid them chomping on your limbs, but stun grenades, pistols, and miniguns are all on the menu in this sequel. Team 17 says that while some foes will require a bit of lateral thinking, such as flanking to shoot them from the rear, or blasting through protective shields, any gun will get the job done if you have the patience.
Weapon upgrades are available at shops scattered around the levels by spending credits. Improvements include juicing your rate of fire, being able to hold more ammo, and dealing more damage. Firepower upgrades are the most expensive to purchase, forcing players to consider their upgrade path in advance rather than dumping all their dollars with reckless abandon. Larger levels will include multiple supply points to prevent backtracking or missing out on upgrades until the next level. As well as beefing up your arsenal, health kits and ammunition can be replenished, and your progress can be saved.
Set-piece moments and boss encounters are important parts of the experience in Alien Breed 2: Assault, and while we saw only one in action, it involved manning a mounted gun turret as groups of enemies attacked us en masse. We were also told about a giant spider that needed to be squashed further into the campaign.
The other big new feature for Alien Breed 2 is Survivor mode, which will be available for solo play or with a buddy locally or online. Teamwork is crucial to staying alive, with teams needing to work together to take down the alien invasion. Survivor levels will be reworked versions of the ones from the single-player story, tweaked to suit two-player action.
If your thirst for zapping xenomorphs has not yet been quenched, then grab your rifle and prepare to get green stuff all over you when Alien Breed 2: Assault busts down the door on Xbox Live Arcade and the PC in September of this year.
We stumble out of the dungeon and into the sun with our first look at the sequel to last year's hit indie RPG.
When Torchlight was released last year as a digital download at a bargain-basement price, fans of the dungeon crawling and hack-and-slash genres showered it with praise. While the game wasn…t built to the same scale as the Diablo series it emulates so lovingly, the experience was both accessible and entertaining, sending you back into the depths of the earth for one more quest, or another chance on the enchanter lucky-dip.
The fact that a sequel is on the way is of little surprise, but the speed with which developer Runic Games is bringing it to market is. Torchlight II feeds directly on the community feedback from the first game and overhauls combat and the user interface and adds a much requested feature in multiplayer. The team believes the latter is best with two to four players for an online game of this nature. While presently there are no plans for the inclusion of player-versus-player combat, they are actively looking at the option to include duels against friends. Bringing the Torchlight franchise to the massively multiplayer online stage also hasn…t been ruled out, and while they're currently focusing their energy on bringing this product to players, we wouldn…t be surprised to see the studio turn on persistency and up-sell players to a free-to-play business model in the future.
A total rework of the character system means that the classes from the first game will not be making a return appearance, meaning there will not be an option to import previous characters from the original game. In their place, four new archetypes are being introduced, two of which were playable at Gamescom 2010. The first, the Railman, is an explorer gentleman with a penchant for big, heavy weapons and melee combat. The second is the Outlander, a hybrid ranged-attack and dark-magic user with both a rifle and a magic glaive used like a boomerang and excellent against groups of enemies.
Fans who got tired of the spiral staircase feel of the level design in Torchlight will be pleased to hear that the game will now expand out of the catacombs, offering a central quest hub, a starting zone, and four new areas in a mixture of indoor and outdoor settings. Outdoors players can expect a day and night cycle as well as dynamic weather effects, which we experienced as rain while playing, Instances will be available in all the zones.
Itemisation has also received some work, and while you will still face the potential of receiving loot outside of your class type when killing a boss, the team hopes that some tightening of which loot drops and when--combined with the ability to trade items with friends--will help alleviate the issue of building up giant cash reserves when selling off all the epic and legendary gear that doesn…t fit your class. Loot should never be a scramble online, though, with all of the items appearing onscreen being solely for you. You will be able to view only your own lootable items, so there shouldn't be any issues with thievery or complex loot rules to cause squabbles.
While it wasn…t on show during our demonstration, we were also told that Torchlight II will ship with some extra community features in its virtual box. Modding tools similar to the ones used by the development team will allow players to design their own Torchlight levels for others to play. Details remain sketchy, but we're eager to see what kinds of levels can be made and how the publisher approaches rating and promoting content.
Runic identified pricing as one of the key factors to its success, saying it is aiming for the lowest price point possible for the sequel. Though the build we saw was only in a pre-alpha state, it was already looking sharp and running smoothly. Expect this game to hit the PC and Mac in the spring of 2011.
Get the exclusive first details on the much-hinted-at Neverwinter, a Dungeons & Dragons-themed massively multiplayer game in development at Cryptic Studios.
For some time, people have heard from a guy who heard from a guy who knows someone that Star Trek Online developer Cryptic Studios was maybe, possibly working on an online Dungeons & Dragons game that might be related to the PC Neverwinter Nights series, somehow. The rumors were only partially right. Kind of. Yes, Cryptic is working on a new fantasy-themed multiplayer game, and yes, it takes place in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting…but while it won't officially be a Neverwinter Nights 3 to follow the previous two games from BioWare and Obsidian, it also won't be a traditional massively multiplayer online game, either. The game will instead focus on cooperative play, requiring players to log into a server to start a session and encouraging players to tackle the adventure together. Neverwinter will give you the option to go solo if you prefer, but this will be a much harder way to play. The game will also feature editing tools that will let you create your own custom content and adventures, and it will offer an all-new story that ties into a new series of novels penned by author R.A. Salvatore. Considering that the game will offer a full storyline, cooperative online play, and a set of editing tools, it'd be fair to say that Neverwinter will be a far cry from Cryptic's usual projects…and that it will also be something of a spiritual successor to the previous Neverwinter Nights games. Cryptic's chief operating officer, Jack Emmert, explains.
GameSpot: Give us an overview of Neverwinter. What is the game and how will people play it? Will it be a full-on massively multiplayer online role-playing game, like City of Heroes or Champions Online?
Jack Emmert: I wouldn't say MMORPG at all--Neverwinter is a cooperative RPG. You can play with a bunch of friends and experience Neverwinter and D&D in a brand-new way. We're trying to create new sorts of games that we call "OMGs" (online multiplayer games).
In terms of Neverwinter itself, players will find it's a brand-new Forgotten Realms. Years and years have passed, and Neverwinter has fallen into ruins. A brave few are trying to eke out their lives and to rebuild the once great metropolis, but many threats stand in the way. And this is where the players come in…
GS: Since this is an official Dungeons & Dragons product, can you explain how the tabletop game's systems will come into play in the game? Will it use a modified version of D&D rules, or will it use rules from the most recent edition of the tabletop game (4th Edition), and if so, in what aspects of the game: combat, saving throws/difficulty classes…?
JE: We're working hand in hand with Wizards of the Coast to translate 4th Edition into our game.
As far as translating the mechanics, there are, of course, the time-honored D&D attributes (strength, dexterity, etc.). One of the best things about 4th Edition is that poor little charisma is useful (that's a shout-out to any old gamers like me). You'll also find D&D's character classes, at least the fundamental ones, in the game.
In terms of class abilities, we're using the same concept of "recharge," which breaks a player's abilities into three categories: at will, once per encounter, and daily. General abilities like a basic sword attack are at will. Slightly more-powerful abilities can only be used once per encounter, and even-more-powerful abilities can be used only once per day.
Instead of that hard-and-fast division, we're using actual time increments, where at will means usable at all times, a once per encounter is a power designed to be used once every encounter, and dailies are used once every few hours.
I think there are two very unique gameplay elements in 4th Edition that we've done something interesting with: action points and healing surges. In the tabletop game, an action point lets a player perform a reroll or add an additional die to a roll. In our game, action points are earned through combat and spent to power special abilities called "boons." These boons give players special boosts, but only in certain circumstances. Healing surges represent the amount of times a player can heal himself before resting. In D&D and Neverwinter, various abilities let players use a surge immediately or perhaps replenish the number of surges available. It's a precious resource that players will need to husband as they adventure in the brave new world.
Positioning, flanking, tactics, and using powers with your teammates are also all things that come from the 4th Edition that are interesting.
Of course, we're using power names and trying to keep power behavior consistent with the pen-and-paper counterparts. Neverwinter will definitely feel familiar to anyone who has played the 4th Edition.
GS: And along those lines, we understand that the game will let players choose to play as one of five character professions. Can you share which professions these will be? How closely will they approximate the 4th Edition rules? Will we see heroic feats, paragon paths/epic destinies…?
JE: Fighter. Wizard. Rogue. Ranger. Cleric. You'll see the powers, abilities, and spells from the latest Players' Handbook spring to life on the computer screen. Neverwinter is all about the heroic levels; the paragon paths and epic destinies will be something we add.
GS: Cryptic has made a name for itself by making online games with powerful, flexible character customization tools that let players make very distinctive-looking characters. Can you talk about how this will come into play in Neverwinter? For instance, can you share which fantasy races will be playable in the game and to what extent you can customize each?
JE: We'll be using the same Cryptic technology and philosophy with our Neverwinter characters that we have in all our games. Namely, players can create just about any look they imagine. In our first release, we'll be doing the classic humans, elves, and dwarves--as well as a few special ones that I won't mention just now.
GS: While previous games from Cryptic have taken place in playfields that were, according to the game fiction, huge (such as the many comic-book-themed zones of Champions Online and the deep reaches of space in Star Trek Online), Neverwinter itself is, according to D&D fiction, a city. It's a big city, but it's just one city. Can you discuss the scope of the game and how big the game's overall play area is planned to be?
JE: Right now, players will be adventuring in and around Neverwinter. Not just in the city, but also the environs. But that's just the release; we'll be planning additional content as we move forward that takes players to new places. Just read R.A. Salvatore's upcoming Neverwinter trilogy to get a taste! It begins with Gauntlgrym.
GS: And on a similar note, Cryptic's previous games have made frequent use of instanced playfields to let solo players or small groups have their own private adventure. Can you speak to how instances will be used in Neverwinter? Do you have a rough estimate of how much of the game's content will be instanced versus being open-world/shared space?
JE: This is a tough question, if only because it presupposes an organization along traditional MMORPG lines (that is, a large persistent zone with many instances connected to it). This is a co-op RPG, so comparing it to other RPGs such as the original Neverwinter Nights or Oblivion would be more appropriate. Some locations are public; some are just for teammates. But it isn't quite the setup of a big zone with side instances.
GS: We understand that Neverwinter will use a system codenamed "Forge" that will let players build their own content. Can you explain how this will work in practice? Also, what kind of content will players be able to make?
JE: Forge (tentative name) will enable players to write adventures, to create maps, and to attach their quests to in-game entrances and NPCs. Our key philosophy is that Forge needs to be accessible (i.e. usable to many people) and that user-generated content is an optional form of content. In other words, a player knows that he's playing UGC and not the game.
GS: We also understand that the game is being launched in tandem with Gauntlgrym, the first book in an all-new Neverwinter novel trilogy by author R.A. Salvatore. Tell us about the game's story and how it will evolve alongside the new books.
JE: The game is set a little over 100 years into the future, and Forgotten Realms is recovering from an epic catastrophe: the death of the god of magic triggered a massive "spellplague" that swept across Faerun and changed everything it touched.
The Salvatore trilogy touches on all the events leading up to the game and, most importantly, how Neverwinter fell. Through these great novels, readers will get a taste of the Neverwinter world, characters, and enemies.
At some point, Neverwinter was laid waste. Why? No one really remembers at this point. The players will need to find out what happened and whether it'll reoccur…
GS: Finally, is there anything else you'd like to add about Neverwinter?
JE: The biggest part of Neverwinter is really our approach to development. It's not a standard, hundreds-of-hours-grinding MMORPG. Mind you, we've done those in the past. This represents a huge departure from our previous efforts; we're focusing a lot on the quality of each thing we do. We've got constant playtests as well as outside, independent mock reviews. We know that Atari gave us a terrific intellectual property, and we want to do it justice.
At Gamescom 2010 we had the chance to see Dawn of War II: Retribution in action, including a look at the cranky Orks and their quest for loot. The game will take place 10 years after the events of Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising and replace the tin-can-wearing Space Marines with the garbage-can-wearing Ork Freebooterz, led by warboss Kaptin Bluddflagg. Joining his ragtag crew are Mister Nailbrain, Spookums the Kommando Nob, and Brikkfist with his jetpack and hammer. Developer Relic Entertainment is keeping the exact story details close to its chest, but it did say that it loosely revolves around the Eldar getting their hands on an important item--an item that the Orks would also like to be in possession of and are willing to smash and kill to steal.
The Ork humour and personality were on show in spades, and as we completed our gear loadout aboard our ship before jumping headlong into the combat, Kaptin Bluddflagg slipped into something a little more menacing, donning a set of sharp, dirty steel shoulder armour. As a Kommando, Spookums can equip a grappling hook, and while it…s not necessarily the most predictable device with regard to its precision, when it works it will allow you to get him close to the action, flanking fortified positions for a tactical advantage.
Our demo level took place on a lava planet. It wasn…t always a lava planet, but the frequent bombardment of the region had seen the planet surface break up, exposing the fiery core underneath. Our objective was to locate and destroy gateways. Variety is key to allowing players to experience battle the way they want to, and DOWII: Retribution is promising plenty of it. Locating war banners allows you to build and add new units to your squad of four heroes, while requisition and population points allow you to quickly amass a small army. Locating and taking control of an HQ will allow the building of vehicles, with the promise of tanks available later in the game. From what we've seen, this isn't a resource management game, so you can simply begin to build once you control the structures.
Stomping around, our main tactic was to use Kaptin Bluddflagg as a meat shield, soaking up all the incoming fire of our attackers, mitigating chunks of it with bonuses coming from our armour and character progression. Once their weapons were fixed on him up front, we used the rest of our squad to lay into them wholesale, Brikkfist rocketing into groups with his jetpack and landing heavily on top of them.
In addition to the pickup items that drop on the battlefield, once you return to your barge after successfully completing a scenario you will earn new war gear and experience points. As you level up, you will be rewarded with a choice of loot, as well as unlock new abilities to use as part of your arsenal.
From our brief look at the game, it…s already very much in the vein of its predecessor and brings with it the humour and looting personalities of the Orks. Changes to the reward system should provide new toys to play with more often. Grab your eye patch and your parrot for when these space buccaneers board the PC in early 2011.
We pull our armies out of our sleevies and visit some cities in this free-to-play PC title.
It…s a bold move to take a franchise as known and loved as Age of Empires and give it away as an online free-to-play game, but that…s exactly what Microsoft is doing. Announced during GDC Europe 2010, Age of Empires: Online is being developed by Robot Entertainment, a team that rose from the ashes of the Ensemble Studios closure, and a group that hopes to break all the rules.
The title focuses on bringing the feel of the long-running historical real-time strategy series to fans, and at the same time establish new audiences, toning down the mature look of its predecessors for a slightly more cartoony aesthetic. It delivers the same Age of Empires gameplay fans have come to expect, but adds an additional layer of customisability and persistency, continuing to collect resources and trade with other players around the world while you…re away from your computer.
A Worker Report shows what your virtual minions have been doing while you…ve been elsewhere, offering up their wood, grain, stone, copper, resin, and scrolls of lore for approval on your return. You will be able to teleport and visit the cities of your friends, purchasing items and accepting quests unavailable in your own neck of the woods and returning a cut of the sales to the owner of the store. Cooperative play will be supported in 95 percent of the game…s quests.
Beginning at level one with nothing, you will build a kingdom, unlocking more elaborate structures and, as you complete levels, traversing through the ages. Combat missions will pull from a mixture of classic AOE gameplay, such as amassing forces from scratch and using premade teams to infiltrate and capture zones in random encounters. Each level gained rewards three points which can be spent on new abilities in the game…s tech tree, while Star Tech perks add passive bonuses, such as increasing your starting amounts of stone. There are a finite number of slots available, meaning that you will need to experiment and choose the ones that best suit your play style.
The development team is also including a new system called Advisers. Like Star Techs, they provide extra firepower or production boosts, but can be changed before each game on a whim rather than needing to respec. Each gained age unlocks an extra adviser slot, retaining the ones that came before it for a multitiered approach to the way you take care of business.
One of the biggest new features in Age of Empires: Online is the addition of equipment. Each building and unit type has slots which can be filled with items found, bought, and rewarded. These change the look and performance of your structures and the men on the battlefield. The example we saw, the epic quality Blessed Rune Shield, usable by any soldier with a free hand, granted our troops a 2 percent hit point increase, a 4 percent armour stat increase against infantry, and a 5 percent chance to resist traps and snares. Once equipped, every unit of that type will receive the item and change its appearance to reflect its presence.
A public beta for Age of Empires: Online has just gone live, and the title hopes to capture old fans and bring in some fresh blood with the same big, deep AOE experience and new online persistent play. The title will be free to download and play, with an as-yet-unrevealed premium content model also available. Expect to see it on the PC in early 2011.
We cast off the burden of convention and get +5 to world boss with a look at Guild Wars 2.
Let…s face it, every game developer and his dog has a massively multiplayer online project in the works, or at the very least an idea for one kicking around in their collective consciousness. They…re a dime a dozen already, but as World of Warcraft has proven, if you can nail the formula, you can name your price. At Gamescom 2010 we got a fresh look at Guild Wars 2, a game that hopes to cast off many of the legacy encumbrances of its competition by building an MMO experience with significantly more personality, and one that encourages true social play.
Ironically while the first game deliberately set a low level cap with hopes of achieving more accessible endgame content, community response has given developer ArenaNet something to reconsider. As a result of feedback, the game will now give you the chance to continue to play beyond level 20. Another core area of differentiation between Guild Wars 2 and its competition is the way it handles social play. In many MMO titles, starting and questing areas become juvenile verbal slinging zones as players battle to control quest items and targets to kill. Guild Wars… mantra is to encourage cooperative play without requiring groups. Rather than force players to party up to complete goals, where inevitably one player is ahead on the quest chain, or another isn…t part of the posse, any players who are near and involved in a quest will receive credit for participation. This also extends to world bosses, which dynamically scale in difficulty and in many cases unlock additional offensive and defensive abilities in line with the number of people involved.
The two examples of this we saw were world bosses Drake Broodmother, a midsized beast with a nasty tail swipe that came into play when enough people were attacking her, and a level-40 dragon who provided a communal loot chest players could grab items from once it had been defeated. This social interaction design philosophy continues on to resurrection, and while many games require a dedicated class to heal and bring players back from the netherworld, anyone can lend a hand in Guild Wars 2 by clicking a fallen stranger on the battlefield and returning him to the fight.
Naturally, if you…re going to spend any time in a virtual world, you will want to present your avatar in a way that best aligns with your own (or your role-playing character…s) personality and aesthetics. Beyond the usual swag of character customisation options like skin colour, hair type, and race, Guild Wars 2 introduces a unique way to bring players a step further into the world. During creation, you will be able to select your toon…s social standing (commoner, nobility, or street kid), choose your biggest life regret (being passed on for the chance to be great, failing to recover your sister…s body, or never joining the circus), and even get the chance to pick which god you believe in. While they may sound like gimmicky additions, each faction has its own race-specific kit-out, adapting the story and putting you and your choices into cutscenes rather than the same old slab of generic text about someone else…s problems.
The sequel may make some assumptions on the capabilities of its first-timers, but the tutorial zone of Shaemoor throws you straight into the action as a centaur attack rages. After saving a handful of local villagers, we're told that the nearby garrison has fallen and is in want of a hero. News comes through a voiced cutscene, and we're told that the final game will include in excess of 60 feature films' worth of narration. Running over with our elementalist mage archetypal character we started cracking skulls. An ability called "elemental attunement" allowed us to switch between our fire and water elemental skills on the fly, changing our action bar and letting us dish out fiery pain or control targets more readily with ice. You don't just stand around watching bars fill to make fireballs; instead, combat is active, requiring you to move your character to avoid enemy strikes and dodge away with steps and rolls.
Guild Wars 2 hopes to turn what it believes is currently a very insular online role-playing experience into a much more free-form and communicative universe. Taking a page out of its biggest competitor's book, ArenaNet says the game will ship on the PC when it…s ready, and we…ll be following its lofty goals with interest.
We went raiding with developer Bluehole Studio in a new build of Tera, the company's upcoming MMORPG.
After an impressive showing at E3 2010, developer Bluehole Studio came to this year's Gamescom with a fresh demo of Tera to show the public. The game is an action-oriented MMORPG, and the section we played saw us taking the role of a warrior, supporting two Bluehole reps as we went on a dungeon crawl. It was a good chance to find out more about the mechanics of the game, which is due to launch next year, as well as talk to its creators about their aims for the project.
One thing's for certain: Tera is an action-focussed massively multiplayer online game if ever we saw one. Our gameplay session was spent hammering the mouse buttons and furiously tapping the number keys to unleash a constant barrage of attacks and spells. The game relies on the player to direct the action--there's no autotargeting, meaning that aiming your attacks while dodging those of your opponents is key to survival. Our character was good at brute force, but he also had a spell at his disposal to stun enemies, allowing him to get in there with the sword.
The control system is simple enough--the WASD keys control movement, while the mouse moves your viewpoint. The left mouse button activates a simple attack--in the warrior's case, a quick sword swipe--while the right mouse button unleashes a series of swipes and results in a large amount of damage if landed. However, Tera piles in a bunch of encounters with smaller enemies who will surround you and hold you in one place, allowing the bigger enemies to pummel you in your static position.
The warrior is quick and powerful, meaning that he has to charge in and lead the attack, which holds the attention of the enemies while the rest of your team attacks from afar. We were supported on our mission by a couple of the developers, who were able to heal us as we fought. We were playing as a level-30 character, halfway along to the level-60 cap, so we were fairly powerful, but the sheer size of the enemies meant that we needed to erect campfires between battles to regenerate our health.
If you're coming to Gamescom this weekend, then you'll be able to see the character customisation on the show floor. If not, stay tuned to GameSpot, and we'll endeavour to bring you more on the game when we next see it.
We bust out of prison and swing our sword with a look at the divergent story in this upcoming fantasy RPG.
When The Witcher was released in 2007, critics and fans alike applauded its use of rich storytelling; intelligent, mature choice and consequence systems; and the creation of a detailed, living world. Three years on, Polish developer CD Projekt Red is back for another tour, bringing with it a sequel that builds on each of its precursor's core strengths.
Since giving it a fresh lick of paint wouldn't fly with the game's dedicated audience, the dev team has completely overhauled the project, and the proof is in the numbers. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings will feature three different game openings, 16 endings, more than 150 minutes of cutscene video, and a total rework of the streaming technology. The latter means that where the previous title included 700 load screens, the follow-up features just four. Our demo included an extensive look at the branching narrative and choices available to players and their ability to make the experience a personalised one by either relishing in it or avoiding conflict.
Skipping straight into the action we were reintroduced to monster-hunting mercenary Geralt, who had found himself in a bit of a predicament in a mission called Escape from Valette Castle. Suspended in the air by his wrists and covered in fresh-looking lash marks on his back and chest, we scrolled around the environment to take in our setting. Cobblestone walls met our gaze everywhere we looked, while not too far away, on the other side of some thick, steel bars, two guards sat chatting. Unbeknownst to them, we already had the key for our escape in our possession, but as they were clearly not ones to shy away from a fight, we opted to play the social card first. Goading the pair into the cell, we dropped down violently, unleashing fist swings to knock one of the men unconscious. Guard number two fell with little resistance, and once the room had been cleared, we took the opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with our sword rather than take on all comers with bare knuckles.
The development team was quick to point out that it is still in the process of tuning difficulty and that for the purpose of skipping through the combat quickly, most enemies required only one or two swipes with the sword to be dispatched. Itemisation has been a key area of focus for the studio, with the character menu screen being divided into all the archetypal inventory slots, such as belts, pants, and gloves. The Witcher 2 will include a significantly raised number of items available to players, while a new crafting system will allow you to add runes to weapons, in our case giving it a faint blue glow and some juicy new stats. Cat potions are just one of the items that have been given a rethink in Witcher 2 and now allow the imbiber to not only see in the dark, but spot targets through walls, not unlike Detective mode in Batman: Arkham Asylum.
It was time for our demo to showcase some of the choices available to players. Rather than simply being provided a set story and being asked to follow the bouncing ball, we were given a firsthand look at how the game will branch as a result of your choices. A two-PC setup had one guide take the combat route to escape the prison, while the other snuck around in the shadows, blowing out fire torches illuminating the corridors and stealthily knocking guards unconscious. The first path led us to a woman being tortured, and after springing to her defense to confront her attackers, we opened up additional dialogue with her, offering optional help from her associates. Path two had us locate the woman's missing son and escape the prison before burning it to the ground. Different choices will determine whether you walk the worn path to the front door, scamper around underground in hidden passages, or accept non-player character assistance to use secret exits.
The final part of our demo showcased a boss fight in an open space with a huge elemental field commander named Draug. The three-phase fight included dodging the flaming arrows of his archer minions, running to safety as tornados destroyed objects on the battlefield, and a meteor shower that charred the earth.
CD Projekt Red isn't mincing its words with this game, telling audience members that they are happy to be put side-by-side with any RPG shipping next year with the belief that The Witcher 2 will be the "best looking RPG of 2011." Easily one of the most visually impressive titles at Gamescom 2010, character models were lifelike and moved naturally, indoor environments were suitably dingy, and the outdoor vistas were beautiful and bathed in warm, natural light. The development team confirmed it is actively exploring options for bringing the game to current-generation consoles, but will not be doing so if the hardware can't give the game the graphical fidelity the studio believes it deserves.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings already looks gorgeous, and the studio still has six months of time up their sleeves to tweak and tune. Keep an eye out for it when it hits the PC in the early part of next year.
Lego Universe is looking to corner the MMO market for younger players with its colourful visuals and safe online environment, but as with many recent Lego games, its appeal isn't just limited to kids.
Undoubtedly the first massively multiplayer game based on Danish building blocks, Lego Universe is finally coming to the close of its four-and-a-half-year development cycle. According to developer NetDevil, the game has actually been an idea at Lego's HQ for over 11 years, so it has been a long time coming. The US-based developer responsible for Jumpgate Evolution brought its game to Gamescom to show it to the thousands of visitors heading to its booth, and we managed to get a private look at the game.
Check out this brand-new Gamescom trailer for Lego Universe!
The demo started with a spot of customisation, and this being a Lego game, you can mix and match a huge variety of different plastic pieces to create your avatar. Creative director Ryan Seabury showed us how it worked, with a very accessible system allowing you to change every aspect of your appearance. There are lots of nice touches at this stage--the Lego characters in the menu system cover their eyes as you enter your password, subtly emphasising to kids the importance of keeping your password away from others.
Once that's all set up, though, you can jump into the game, where you'll find a huge maelstrom is tearing through the Lego galaxy and breaking everything. It's your job to join Nexus Force and save the universe, and the first stop is to build your rocket. Whenever you build something in the game, you enter a private room where you can be alone with your imagination to create in private. It's easy to build things using the templates provided, but you can also get in and change minute details, using Lego bricks that have been out of production for years, and even in colours that may never have actually existed.
There won't be any XP earning or levelling up in Lego Universe, and instead the game will have a much more open and flexible approach to progression. According to the developer, a Lego character should be able to reinvent himself, so you'll gain new gear to customise your character as you progress through the game. You'll also be able to engage in challenges with your friends, such as a Left 4 Dead-esque co-op game where you need to face off against wave after wave of enemies.
One of the most important parts of the game is the social interaction, and as the game has a young target audience, the approach is markedly different to most other MMO games. The core idea is based around real-world interaction, with the idea that parents or guardians register friends based on who they know in real life. Kids will then be able to interact with their friends via text chat, which incorporates predictive text to make typing easier, while emotive actions such as breakdances keep things lighthearted. It's then also easy to share creations just between these friends so that minors are protected from content made by people they don't know.
There's a lot of Little Big Planet-esque creativity in Lego Universe, and if you've tried to build something in the PlayStation 3 platformer, you'll be familiar with the concept behind NetDevil's game. We were shown an example of a simple game that the development team had built as a proof of concept. First of all, they created two giant ducks from Lego bricks and placed them in a small area. They then attached a set of basic premade behaviour types to the ducks, such as avoiding players when they approached and breaking into a pile of bricks if they hit another object. Using this simple programme, the team was able to create a simple race for two players, who had to try to make their duck do a lap as quickly as possible.
As for the long-term, NetDevil has a five-year road map for the game once it has been released, with new content being incorporated into the game on a monthly basis. The team is also looking into supporting voice chat at some point in the future. The game will be sold in retail form, with a subscription fee of 9.99 euros per month. It will launch in the UK on 15 October 2010, so watch out for more coverage on the game in the run up to release.
We get all nostalgic with a look at Wizarbox Games' point-and-click adventure.
While the humble point-and-click adventure generally no longer enjoys the same level of success it did back in the early '90s, in Germany, the genre is thriving. Here at Gamescom, the booths are filled with adventure game delights. One such example is Gray Matter, a dark thriller developed by Wizarbox Games.
Gray Matter is written by renowned author and game designer Jane Jensen. It tells the story of Samantha Everett, a student and part-time street performer. After her motorbike breaks down on a rainy night, she takes shelter at a mansion, owned by the mysterious neurobiologist Dr. David Styles. She inadvertently becomes his assistant and is sent on an errand to retrieve subjects for one of his experiments.
However, she soon finds out that the locals are extremely wary of Styles, who has become a recluse after losing his wife in a car accident. Undeterred, she uses her street performance skills to entice subjects to the mansion, only for the experiment to set off a chain reaction of inexplicable events. It…s your job to take control of Sam, and Dr. Styles, to discover the truth about the strange goings-on.
The game is played like a typical point-and-click. You move your character using the mouse, interacting with objects in the environment. All the usual commands are present; you can look at objects, pick them up, and use them to solve puzzles. In the Xbox version of the game, you control your character directly, using the analogue pad to move him or her around the prerendered 2D backgrounds.
Sadly, we weren…t shown any puzzles from the game, but we were told that they would use Sam…s street performance abilities, as well as Dr. Styles… scientific ones. We did, however, get a look at some of the game in motion. It…s similar to how the old Resident Evil games used to look, with 3D characters overlaid on prerendered 2D backgrounds. Of course, this being a much newer game, the character models and backgrounds were more detailed, with a dark and sinister-looking art style. The story also sounds interesting, and we were told that the plot gets even stranger later on when Styles starts to see visions of his deceased wife.
Gray Matter is due for release on the PC and Xbox 360 in Q3 of this year, which gives you just enough time to brush up on your point-and-click skills.
James Kozanecki sits down with Lionhead's Louise Murray to get the lowdown on the game's Road to Rule and Sanctuary mechanics, as well as discuss other changes and influences.
Who says gamers don't go outside? Coming to you from Luna Park, GameSpot AU gets hands-on with a plethora of Kinect titles. We chat to Lionhead about Fable 3, Xbox head David McClean about the state of the 360, and discuss Dead Rising 2 and the future of DLC!
On Today on the Spot, we take a look a look at what's new This Week on XBL and get a demo of Super Scribblenauts on the DS. We go on location for a Call of Duty: Black Ops event and a Big Buck Hunter Pro event at Hooters!
